(2007) Philip Seymour Hoffman as CIA agent Gust Avrakotos, a Zenmaster of realism, is the sparkling star of this film (Kramer to Hanks' Seinfeld), directed by Mike Nichols, screenplay by Aaron Sorkin based on actual events from George Crile's book. Everyone else, including Tom Hanks as Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson and Julia Roberts as the politically conservative but socially promiscuous heiress Joanne Herring, among the wealthiest of Texans, serve as a terrific supporting cast. Without Gust this film and the dramatized history it portrays would not have been possible or nearly as funny.

In April 1980 while enjoying the company of Joanne, Paul Brown, Crystal Lee, and a pair of strippers, everyone in the buff, in a hot tub in Las Vegas, Charlie catches sight of Dan Rather reporting from Afghanistan on a tv set, turning his attention from the tits to the tube. Returning to the nation's capital, Charlie, who sits on three subcommittees in Congress where funding for the State Department, the CIA, and the Defense Department converge, requests a doubling of covert funds (from $5 million to $10 million) to assist the mujahedin in their resistance to the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Joanne, who has her own undercover contacts in Washington and generously supports the rights of women in the Middle East, calls Charlie to thank him for his increase of financial support for the rebels. She invites him to Houston to watch a documentary film about the conflict and then arranges for him to fly to Pakistan to meet with President Zia (Om Puri) as well as to see for himself the plight of Afghans in a refugee camp in Peshawar.

Galvanized by what he has seen and heard, Charlie is determined to do whatever it takes to get effective weaponry into the hands of the mujahedin to shoot down the Russian helicopters and destroy their tanks, since the American embassy in Pakistan prefers to allow the Soviets to get bogged down in their own Vietnam-like quagmire at the expense of the lives of Afghan fighters and their families. Immediately upon his return to Washington, Charlie directs his administrative assistant, Bonnie Bach (Amy Adams), to get a high-ranking official from the CIA in his office; instead he gets Gust.

Nearly everyone in the federal government in Washington, DC, seems most interested in covering his ass, kissing someone else's ass, or using her ass for favors. In this environment it's no coincidence why so many people are "assistants" of one sort or another. As for those actually willing to do any ass kicking, Gust says to Charlie: "me and three other guys."

At the same time, Charlie becomes a person of interest involving accusations of his snorting cocaine with Paul and Crystal in Las Vegas. This unpleasant interference in his effort to go after the Soviets in Afghanistan becomes a useful distraction for the media from paying too much attention to the clandestine operation just underway. In addition to Bonnie, Charlie's Angels - four gorgeous girls with ample cleavage (one's called Jailbait) - manage his affairs as US representative; when a visitor asks why all of them are so attractive, one of them explains that Charlie says any girl can be trained to have good skills at typing, answering the phone, and taking dictation, but not tits.

Chess-whiz Mike Vickers (Christopher Denham) provides expertise on the armaments needed: they must be captured Soviet-made weapons surreptitiously delivered to Pakistan to avoid American fingerprints. Israel has stockpiles of the needed ordnance, but Charlie and Gust have to employ all of their guile and wiles to convince their Israeli contact to agree to deal with their enemies - Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan; similarly the Syrians must be accommodated (involving a belly dancer) to work with the Jews.

Using the mechanism of blind voting on appropriation bills, the IOUs he's collected over the years (his district asks little of him other than to support legislation letting citizens keep their guns and their taxes low), and his persuasive personality - he especially needs the support of Congressman Doc Long (Ned Beatty) - Charlie manages over the course of the decade and the movie to increase funding (with the Saudis ponying up half) to a billion dollars a year.

With the means (particularly Stinger missiles) to knock hundreds Soviet aircraft out of the sky, the mujahedin with God on their side, drive the godless communists from their country in 1989. That's good, right? We'll see. Not long after things got screwed up, such as money in Congress for improving infrastructure and schools in Afghanistan being denied, as the crazies began to pour into Kabul. Soon both sides of a new conflict would be claiming to be holier than thou.

(My one complaint is that none of the characters shows any aging physically after a decade of events; for example, the real Charlie Wilson was 47 in 1980, thus Tom Hanks should look 57 by the movie's conclusion; most people look different by then, especially after all that booze and womanizing. The 74-year-old former Democratic congressman underwent lifesaving transplant surgery just prior to the film's being released to theaters.)

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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